‘Put your hands behind your head, come down the stairs slowly and sit on the floor.’
That put an end to any thought of grabbing my pistol. I did as I was told.
The office door opened and Nicholas Rambart came out, followed by... Eve Rambart! What the...? I’d seen her shot and carted away in a carpet tube. I kept quiet as Rankin led them down the stairs. Then I noticed Eve Rambart was handcuffed.
‘Mr Nevis,’ Nicholas smiled at me. ‘You really are becoming a pain in the arse. I gave you one job to do and plainly you failed me.’ He waved a hand towards his wife. ‘She’s still alive.’
I took the plunge, hoping to confuse him. ‘I saw her shot. I saw her shot in the Knightsbridge apartment.’
Nicholas laughed. ‘No, Mr Nevis, you saw her tasered. You saw exactly what we wanted you to see.’
That shook me back a bit. ‘Wanted me to see?’
‘Yes, of course. You don’t think that your spy nest in the building opposite went unnoticed surely? That nasty incident on the landing with one of Woodward’s spooks set our alarm bells ringing; they obviously knew about the apartment and would be watching it – just a matter of finding where from. Didn’t take long, but we found you watching us from the building opposite, not Woodward. He must have picked us up on one of his many street cameras masquerading as a traffic sensor.’
‘Why would you taser your wife?’
‘I wanted you to believe she was dead – after all, you had a million pound contract on her life; you might have carried it out and that would have been very unfortunate.’
‘Unfortunate how?’
‘Well, things had come to light that changed the situation. If you remember our meeting, I told you I didn’t want to become the third of her husbands to die suspiciously.’
I nodded.
‘Mr Nevis, in my business you deal in very big amounts of money; you create relationships with people who are, shall we say, open to other offers as the merchandise we offer is not always available on the open market.’
‘Banned by the Geneva Arms Convention,’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘Well, in a way yes, some products are made and available but only to certain countries. Other countries we are not permitted to sell them to, and of course that ...’ His voice tailed off as he hunched his shoulders and spread his palms.
I finished his sentence, ‘Creates a black market.’
He smiled, ‘A very lucrative black market.’ He turned to Eve. ‘My dear wife here has been, unknown to me, a very big player in that black market. A very big player for a considerable time on behalf of the IRG, using me – just as she had used her previous husbands – to provide arms to them, which is why she is still alive. She is a bargaining chip, Mr Nevis, she is not what she seems, she is an agent in the Defence Procurement Department of the Iranian Government – not even Woodward knows that. Iran will want her back and will do a very good prisoner exchange to get her – that is why she is still alive.’
I was confused. ‘But those crates went to Turkey, not Iran.’
‘Turkey is a staging post. In my business one keeps a very low profile, as you know – you could only find one picture of me, and a very out-of-date one at that. I keep everything at arm’s length – double arm’s length if I can – and this warehouse is a case in point. Yes, it is rented to a subsidiary company of my businesses but I had never been here until a few weeks ago. One of my trusted managers had noted that we had more crates than we should have had; a week later he disappears. Strange, eh? To cut a long story short, Mr Nevis, my dear wife, who handles my accounts, had ordered more of certain products than I needed to fulfil my genuine orders, and these extras were on a separate invoice which was paid for by bank transfer of funds from Switzerland – exactly the same as the way I make payments, so nobody thought anything was strange.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But those funds came from an IRG Swiss account, not mine and of course the extras ordered were for the IRG. Clever, eh?’
‘Very.’
‘And so the crates were shipped out with my genuine crates to my genuine customer, the Turkish Defence Force, and to their warehouse in Antakya.’
‘And they didn’t notice?’
‘Why would they? A lorry with crates of armaments arrives at an arms store – a perfect ploy. Then those for the IRG are moved on at a later date by IRG people who have infiltrated the warehouse workforce and use false movement paperwork. The military bosses at the warehouse see paperwork that says the arms and missiles are going to their own forward units at the Turkish borders. Everything was working so well for this bitch!’ He turned quickly and slapped Eve across the face. She staggered back and fell to the floor. I tensed myself, ready to go for my gun if Gold took this opportunity to open fire. She didn’t.
Rambart turned back to me, smiling again. ‘And then we had the little episode of the freighter and the Turkish warehouse explosions. Were you responsible for those, Mr Nevis?’
I pursed my lips and shook my head, no.
‘I am not sure I believe you, anyway it gave the IRG game away. Turkey is a very up-to-date country, Mr Nevis; their forensic scientists are second to none, and it quickly became clear that an explosion of that magnitude was far too big for what should have been in that warehouse at the time, and the remnants of missiles and arms that they pieced together afterwards far outnumbered the official listings of what should be there.’ He paused for effect. ‘So that was when my dear friend Serife Aydin, my long time contact and Commander in the Turkish Special Forces, took control.’ He gave a small bow in her direction. ‘As luck would have it, she is a remarkable likeness to my wife. Just a few tweaks to the hairstyle and she could fool anybody from a distance – even you.’ Things were falling into place; I was beginning to understand the whole scenario. Eve Rambart was an IRG agent. She had married the bosses of the biggest arms producing companies, murdered them and taken control of the companies making sure of a continuing supply to Iran through the Turkey warehouse scam.
A car pulled up outside. I noticed that Aydin never took her eye or the gun off me. A car door shut and Jameson Reynolds came in. He stood for a moment and took in the situation.
‘I wondered why the gate wasn’t locked and no security at the front.’ He walked over and stood beside Aydin. ‘Hello Ben, looks like you’ve got yourself in a bit of a mess.’
‘I should have known you’d be involved.’
‘Money, Ben, you know how I get attracted to it – the more the better. My good friend Nicholas was dealing above his financial limit, and with his business being a little, shall we say, under the radar, normal lines of credit were closed to him.’
‘You always were the money man.’
‘Minimum risk, Ben – stay in the background, hands off and charge a good rate of interest. There’s always somebody who needs a loan and if they default, well, there’s always people like you and Grant to persuade them not to.’ He looked up at Rankin. So that’s Rankin’s role: enforcer.
Was that what had happened: Rambart hadn’t made payments to Reynolds that were due, so he took part of his business? I knew from the old gangster days Reynolds never ever let anybody default – never. Another piece of jigsaw fell into place.
Reynolds pulled a pair of latex gloves from his coat pocket, pulled them on and then walked over and reached through the stair rail and picked up my gun. ‘Unfortunately, once in a while somebody doesn’t tell me the truth as to who they are and who they are doing business with. I don’t like that, especially when the promised payment isn’t made on time. But of course you know that Ben, don’t you – you must remember a few payment overdue reminders you gave to people for me in the old days? Of course you do – and also the final chapter if nothing happened, examples had to be made. Just as now, an example has to be made.’
The fear on Nicholas Rambart’s face turned to shock as Reynolds pointed the gun and shot Eve Rambart in the head. He walked over to where she had fallen and made sure she was dead with another shot.
<
br /> He turned to me. ‘That was your job, Ben. Nicholas offered you a million to do that, same as Eve offered you a million to kill Nicholas. I told you I’d recommended them both to you. I knew what they wanted, of course I did, and you could have done it, just like the old days when you got rid of a couple of people for me – easy money Ben, if you’d done it.’
Another piece fell into place, ‘Leaving you in sole charge of Rambart- Reynolds International.’
He looked surprised. ‘My word Ben, you have done your homework haven’t you. Yes, correct, I would have been the major shareholder and CEO of a company with the sole rights to sell arms, both legal and illegal, to Turkey, one of the biggest arms buyers in the world and my dear friend here, Commander Aydin would see that it stayed that way without the likes of Eve Rambart using it for getting illegal arms to her Iranian masters. But you didn’t do the job, did you Ben, so I have to complete it.’
He raised the gun and shot Nicholas Rambart in the head; Nicholas Rambart slumped to the floor like a rag doll. Reynolds turned back to me. I knew that if he lifted the gun towards me Gold would take him out.
‘Nicholas was a fool Ben, he had no idea what was going on right under his own eyes until I told him. Eve was very good at her job. She fooled me at the beginning as we took over the four biggest ordnance manufacturers one by one, I thought it was just business, no idea she was putting it all together for the IRG. I was a partner with her from the beginning, the plan worked well, she married the bosses and I arranged their accidental deaths once they had changed their wills so that she inherited their major share holdings and control of the companies. She was good, so bloody good even I didn’t realise she was shipping extras destined for Iran. When I found out I played the pair of them against each other and it has worked out just as I thought it would.’ He looked down at Nicholas Rambart’s still body, ‘I do believe I am now the major shareholder and CEO of the company – perhaps I should change its name from Rambart-Reynolds International to just Reynolds International, eh?’ He smiled and pointed at the bodies, ‘Two dead Ben – killed by your gun with your bullets in their heads, professional job. The sort of hit the police know you are capable of; the sort of hit they know you have done in the past and never nailed you for, so a feather in their caps to have you in the frame with such strong evidence on these two killings, eh? Have you guessed the plan yet?’
I hadn’t. But I knew Gold wouldn’t let too much harm come my way.
Reynolds put my gun on the floor between the bodies. ‘I am going now, Ben – so is Serife. Her bosses will be very pleased that the people organising armament supplies to their enemies in the IRG have been eliminated and business can get back to normal. The only thing that remains is what to do with you? Pretty obvious really Ben, Rankin will kill you – your gun will be in your dead hand and the gun that Rankin kills you with will be in Nicholas’s hand. You killed each other. Perhaps you had Eve as prisoner and Nicholas, the dutiful husband, came to rescue her. Who cares? You’re both dead and the fingerprints and guns tell whatever story the police like to settle on. Goodbye, Ben. Pity it didn’t work out – I quite like you.’
He walked to the door and Aydin went out with him. I looked up at Rankin; I knew Gold would have him in her sights and if he pointed his gun at me he was dead.
He didn’t point his gun at me; he came down a few stairs with it held at his side pointing at the floor and slowly and purposely he moved his arm out to the right, pointing the gun towards the wooden crates on the right-hand side of the warehouse. He loosed off a shot waited a few seconds and fired another one then slowly bent and put his gun on the stairs before raising his arms and coming down. When he was a few stairs away from his gun I moved fast and picked mine up and covered him. He kept coming down and stopped at the bottom.
‘What are you playing at, Rankin?’
‘Reynolds would have heard those shots Ben, he’ll think I killed you, one to the body and one to the head. Tell your partner she can come out now.’
I didn’t need to; Gold emerged from between two stacks of crates on my right, her AK-47 up and pointing at Rankin.
He smiled. ‘Did Woodward give you a phone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Got it with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Take a picture of me and send it.’
‘Why?’
‘You’ll see why. Do it please.’
I took Woodward’s mobile from my trouser thigh pocket, switched it on, took a picture of Rankin standing with his hands in the air and sent it. Almost immediately it rang.
‘Yes.’
Woodward’s voice was very calm. ‘He’s one of ours.’
‘He could have been killed.’
‘What is happening?’
I explained where we were and what had unfolded.
‘Put Rankin on.’
I passed the phone over. Rankin listened for quite a while before closing it and passing it back.
‘There’s a team of cleaners coming over to clear all this up and get rid of the bodies. Once that’s done the Anti Terrorism Boys will come in and remove any paperwork from the office, then the Army Ordnance will clear the warehouse. I’m to stay and supervise. Nothing happened here, Ben – the warehouse will become vacant.’
‘And us?’ I shifted my hand between Gold and me.
‘You’ve forty-eight hours before the fraud squad go into Rambart- Reynolds International with warrants and the Stock Exchange delists it.’
‘Forty-eight hours to do what?’
‘Woodward didn’t say.’ Rankin smiled and shrugged. ‘But I personally wouldn’t be too happy about being played like that by Reynolds, if you see what I mean. Nasty piece of work – we could do without people like that.’
Well, if that wasn’t a nod and a wink I don’t know what is.
‘And the Turkish Army lady?’
‘Foreign Office will raise a deportation order on her, but she’ll probably be on her way to catch a flight to Turkey as we speak. If she isn’t then I would guess that as soon as the balloon bursts at Rambart-Reynolds she will be.’ He held his hand out and we shook. ‘Good to work with you again Ben, even though you didn’t know we were.’ He turned to Gold and shook her hand too. ‘Thank you for not being trigger-happy,’
We walked towards the door, then a thought struck me and I shouted back. ‘Oh, I forgot – there’s a security guard under the desk in the gatehouse that might need some medical treatment.’
****************************************
CHAPTER 22
I didn’t sleep well. Every time I thought of Reynolds I got angry; I’d done him lots of favours in the distant past, lots. I’d taken people off his back, nasty people, and even sent a couple to the magician – the magician being a chap I know who makes things disappear, mainly bodies. Okay, so Reynolds had put me in line for a couple of million quid, but only to harvest multi-millions for himself and then kill me afterwards. Yes, I was angry. I finally got to sleep about four in the morning and didn’t wake ‘til after midday. I showered and ate a bowl of All-Bran sprinkled with walnuts, my regular breakfast – keeps the bowels moving, and if that part of your system is working regular everything else will be too. I gave Gold a call.
‘You okay?’
‘Fine, you?’
‘Yes, still bloody angry at Reynolds.’
She paused for a moment. ‘Have you forgotten something?’
‘It’s not your birthday again, is it?’ Four years running I’d missed her birthday; it’s on my mobile with an alarm flag, but I hadn’t heard it beep.
‘No, not my birthday.’
‘Okay so what have I forgotten?’ I was expecting some mundane trivial thing.
‘You’ve got a set of keys to Reynolds’s dealing rooms.’
Of course I had – of bloody course I had. I used them to go in with the sweep team every month after office hours. How could I forget that?
‘He won’t be expecting you – you’re dead.’
/>
‘I am, aren’t I.’ I thought for a couple of moments. ‘Are you gold-digging tonight?’
‘No.’
‘Okay, meet you in the car park here at midnight.’
‘Okay.’ She rang off.
I had some work to do.
************************************
Gilbert Charles, not his real name, owns an up-market gunsmith’s in St Martin’s Lane, just up from Trafalgar Square. The old-fashioned brass hanging doorbell rang when I went in. Charles was fiddling about at the counter polishing a shotgun; his main income came from the country set, the toffs who bred birds in order to kill them in their first year of life – nice people. I once dreamt about having a line of them running off over a gorse scrub whilst I pumped lead into their arses from a double-barrel. I get dreams like that; never forgotten that one. I ought to get help really.
‘Mr Nevis, long time no see.’ Gilbert put down the gun and shook my hand, his welcome genuine. He gave every impression of being a country gent himself: tweed check jacket, cavalry twill trousers, brown brogues – all he needed was a deerstalker hat to complete the image.
‘How are you, Gilbert – still facilitating the deaths of a million birds every year?’ I read the word facilitating in the paper a couple of weeks ago and had been itching to use it ever since. Silly, eh?
Gilbert spread his hands and made like Fagin. ‘Got to make a penny or two.’
We go back quite a way do Gilbert and me; if his la-di-da clients knew his background they’d run a mile. His main income, before he served seven years for it, was refurbishing collectors’ vintage guns so they could shoot again, and selling or renting to the criminals who used them on robberies or worse. The top twelve inches from the barrels of double-barrelled shotguns were often removed in Gilbert’s workshop to produce a handy sawn-off version that would probably be pushed into the face of some petrified bank or post office employee. A leopard doesn’t change its spots, so I had no doubt Gilbert was still active in that business behind the facade of his posh shop.
TURKISH DELIGHT Page 13
